Long Flowering Plants

Good morning from Glendoick do you have some hardy plants ones that come up every year, which flower for ages?

There are actually a good selection of plants you can put in, that will start flowering in early Summer as we are at the moment, and will probably be still flowering in September, October, November even at Christmas time if we get mild weather.

So here I have a selection. The one nearest to me this is Dianthus or carnations or pinks. They need gritty soil and they certainly don't like to get too wet. Dry'ish' weather is good, if it's too wet, the flowers can go over quite quickly. If you keep deadheading these, they will go flowering on and on and on, all the way through the summer, probably starting in April, May and going on straight into probably at least until August.

Most of the other ones that we've got on this table are slightly later flowering, apart from this Nemesia here. Now this is sometimes described as an annual plant, but if you live reasonably near the sea like Dundee, Broughty Ferry or Perth and you have it in a raised bed or some very well-drained soil, then these will go on from year to year. Again, a little bit of deadheading does no harm. You can also give them a little bit of a prune and you'll get another flash of flowers and these can go on flowering right into the autumn, they’re very compact. This one here is called Amelie.

KEN COX ON LONG FLOWERING PLANTS

Hardy Fushias are great plants and they're starting to come into flower now. This is another plant that you can still have in flower in October, November time with masses and masses of bells hanging down in lots of different colours: pink, red, white and generally any colour you like. 

Probably the best-known plant to this collection are the Potentillas they have flowers in all sorts of different colours: reds and oranges and yellows.  They are good for low hedging and good for containers. They start flowering in June and again they will flower on and off all summer. If they get a bit straggly just give him a haircut, they're incredibly robust, really tough and grow anywhere. Pretty much any soil is good and the more sun you give them the better they get.  

If you want something a little bit lower growing, this little Persecaria here is in flower now.  This is another one that starts flowering in June and I've seen this in flower in November and December. When ground cover planted at the front of the border it's quite vigorous and it just keeps putting up these little tufts of pale pink flowers all summer. Really easy plant just needs plenty of sunshine. We use this as a kind of border edge, it routes into the ground and spreads around, but it's not too invasive so it's great plant and so that's Persecaria.

Lastly, this is Geranium Rozanne. They had a vote at Chelsea a couple of years ago for the best hybrid plant bred in the last hundred years and this came in as the number one geranium.  The reason why is it so good is that the flower is a very beautiful vibrant glowing blue colour. It starts flowering at this time of year and it just goes on and on and on. I think it's because it's sterile it doesn't set any seed so it just carries on flowering for six months. It's a fairly low growing plant, maybe six inches high and it spreads fairly slowly, making a little mound sort of clump and it's just a fantastic plant. If you don’t like this it must be because you don't like the colour blue and who doesn't like the colour blue? I love this it's a great plant and it fully deserves it’s award.

If you need any other information about long flowering plants or any of the other things that we have been discussing on these videos, any aspect of gardening pop into Glendoick Garden Centre on the Perth, Dundee Road, visit our website www.glendoick.com and like us on Facebook where you'll get these videos every week when they come out."

***

Ken Cox is the resident Small City, Big Personality Garden columnist and expert. Born in 1964 into a family of renowned plantsmen, Kenneth Cox is grandson of planthunter, writer and nurseryman Euan Cox and son of Peter Cox VMH. The three generations were and are considered  the world's leading experts on rhododendrons.